Thursday, April 28, 2011

House Budget Update

The full House Appropriations committee met in a marathon session on Wednesday to consider the full House budget proposal.  The committee met for 7 hours and voted on 70 amendments.  The amendments are online here.  The Money Report is here, and the Special Provisions are here.  Thanks to our new Policy Analyst Corye Dunn for covering the Appropriations Committee yesterday!  The full House will vote on the budget next week.  The budget will then go to the Senate, and finally the two chambers will work out their differences before sending the budget to the governor.

A few points on the amendments:
  • Residential Schools for the Deaf and Blind (Page F6 of Money Report) - this change was actually made before yesterday but we didn't note previously: when the Education subcommittee eliminated the full-time Superintendent position, the money saved did go back into the schools overall budget, reducing the amount of overall reductions to the schools from $1.7 mil to $1.55 mil.
  • There was an amendment  (by Representative Glazier) to ensure that there would be no elimination of positions in the Positive Behavior Support program at the Department of Public Instruction.
  • There was an amendment (by Representative Burr) to allow the department the flexibility of adjusting Medicaid provider rates prior to October 1.
  • There was a motion made by Representative Ingle to close Samarkand Youth Development Center the second year of biennial instead of the first, but the amendment failed.
  • There was an amendment (by Representative Dollar) that allows funds allocated to LMEs for community mh/dd/sa services to be used to purchase additional local inpatient beds, at the discretion of the Secretary.
  • Another amendments (by Representative Torbett) moved money from the Housing Trust Fund, an essential resource for affordable housing in NC, to the Department of Cultural Resources.
  • Representative Dollar also moved for an amendment to continue exception to pre-authorization requirements for prescriptions related to the treatment of mental illness and HIV/AIDS.
After the full budget passes the House next week, we will provide a summary and highlight the issues of greatest concern to us.

No comments:

Post a Comment

We are eager to hear your feedback on our policy blog posts! However, we would like to ask that conversation remain civil. Avoid offensive, vulgar or hateful language and please be respectful of all viewpoints and opinions, even if they may differ from your own. We do not monitor each and every posting, but we reserve the right to delete comments that violate our policy.